In my last, it was made to appear that the cost of employing Slave labor in Virginia over free labor in New-York, was equal to an addition of one dollar to every dollar now expended for labor. This loss, be it remembered, is not a loss merely to the employer, but is a loss to the whole body politic—an abstraction from the general wealth of Virginia, of the United States, and of the world.

And it by no means follows, that, by disposing of his slaves, as things are at present, and hiring free laborers, any farmer in Virginia can make a saving of 100 per cent. The principle of demand and supply here comes in. The laborer that, in New-York, gives a certain amount of exertion for a certain price, soon finds that for that price here a less amount of work is customarily expected. He adopts slave habits of labor—he suits his wares to the market. He sees that the capitalists of Virginia give a high price for a poor article—he furnishes the poor article. But there are also other laws, besides this of demand and supply, that affect this matter.

“Man is a social being.” The large amount of labor performed in Virginia is and long has been done by negroes. The negroes are a degraded people; degraded not merely by position, but actually immoral, low-lived; without healthy ambition, but little influenced by high moral considerations, and in regard to labor not [at] all affected by regard for duty. This is always recognized, and debasing fear, not cheering hope, is in general allowed to be the only stimulant to exertion. A capitalist was having a building erected in Petersburg, and his slaves were employed in carrying up the brick and mortar for the masons on their heads; a Northern man standing near remarked to him that they moved so indolently it seemed as if they were trying to see how long they could be in mounting the ladder without actually stopping. The builder started to reprove them, but after moving a step turned back and said, “It would only make them move more slowly still when I am not looking at them, if I should hurry them now—and what motive have they to do better? It’s no concern of theirs how long the masons wait. I am sure if I was in their place I shouldn’t move as fast as they do.”

Now let the white laborer come here from the North or from Europe; his nature demands a social life; shall he associate with the poor, slavish, degraded, low-lived, despised, unambitious negro, with whom labor and punishment are almost synonymous, or shall he be the friend and companion of the white man in whose mind labor is associated with no ideas of duty, responsibility, comfort, luxury, cultivation or elevation and expansion either of mind or estate—as it is, where the ordinary laborer is a free man, free to use his labor as a means of obtaining all these and all else that is to be respected, honored or envied in the world?

Associating with either or both is it possible that he will not be demoralized, hate labor, give as little of it for his hire as he can, become base, cowardly, faithless-“worse than a nigger.”

I ask you, Virginians, if this is not so—if you do not know it to be so? Is [117] not this a simple, reasonable, satisfactory explanation of those failures in the substitution of free laborers for slaves to which you are in the habit of referring as settling this question?

See you not that it is Slavery still, that, like the ship-worm, is noiselessly and imperceptibly ever opening the leaks by which your state, the greatest of all, the vanguard of the fleet, rolls helplessly water-logged far astern of all?

Nine out of ten of the thinking men of Virginia are so convinced, and whisper among themselves, what is to be done? And the rest of the crew double-shot the starboard battery, and loudly threaten what they will do if we of the North don’t mind our business, and quit advising and pitying them, and send back the rats that swim away from them.

Well, it’s all very true that we can’t help them, and that our attempts to do so only embarrass them, and that we have among us plenty of bad and more weak and foolish people that would do better to mind their own business and leave them to their fate; that we have beams enough in our own eyes; that the condition of some of our laborers is bad, as bad as theirs, worse than theirs; that this shows a rottenness in the planks of our system which we would do well to probe and study to mend. I am convinced of it all—the more so, the more sadly and earnestly so, for what I see here. There is wrong in both systems. Too much competition and self-seeking in our labor as there is too little in theirs. They prove it to me; I thank them for it; they cannot object if I, with no unkind or invidious purpose, frankly describe the nature of the evils they themselves have to deal with.

And they must understand that we have an interest and a certain responsibility in whatever of evil belongs to them, as we have in all that concerns the human family. That with a fair understanding of the nature of this evil, and of all its relations, we shall find that we have little or nothing to do about it ourselves, but to quietly wait and pray, for them in wisdom to move, is not improbable; and I hope and believe, that what I shall have occasion to write in regard to it, will favor such an understanding.

A proper appreciation of the difficulties that embarrass the people of the South in connection with the subject of Slavery, that lie in the way of any action favorable to even the amelioration of the condition of the slave by the action of law, would do more to restore friendly feeling and confidence between the two great sections of our country, than all the compromise measures that could be contrived, however strictly and conscientiously carried out. Only let it be known at the North in addition to a slight appreciation of these difficulties, that there was a general disposition to boldly, manfully, look them in the face, and to deal with them in a broad, Statesmanlike and Christian like spirit, and the fanaticism of Abolition is dead and buried.

Only let the North show a disposition in future to regard the subject of Slavery as one over which she has no control, let indignation be quieted and turned to the injustice, and barbarism in her midst, let fierce denunciation and [118] exciting appeals and even senselessly unpractical counsels be silenced, and I rejoice to state my conviction that in Virginia at least, hosts of great, good, and talented men, are all ready and earnestly purposed to give themselves with all their energies to the mighty task.

Even the men who have no concern above dollars and cents are well convinced this day, and it is commonly calculated among them, that if the Slaves could be quietly removed from their limits, the State would fill up so rapidly with free-men, and its sources of wealth would be so much more speedily and economically developed, that in five years’ time the increase in the value of all real estate would more than pay for the value that the Slaves are now reckoned by their masters to be worth.

I am ready to give it as my present opinion, after what I have seen already of Slavery, that the African race whether it has been elevated or degraded by subjection to the whites of the South, is in many respects, and shows itself in the majority of instances to be, happier, intellectually, morally and physically, in Slavery than in what passes at the South under the name of Freedom, and that almost is the only freedom that it is practicable at present to be permitted to it.

Slavery in Virginia, up to the present time, however it has improved the general character and circumstances of the race of miserable black barbarians that several generations since were introduced here, has done nothing to prepare it, and is yet doing nothing to prepare it, for the free and enlightened exercise of individual independence and responsibility. THEREFORE, is Slavery the greatest sin and shame upon any nation or people on God’s earth. The slaveholders say that we and others, by our impracticable interference, are responsible for this sin and shame. Let God judge, and let us keep silence.

I wish now to give you some idea of the condition of the freed blacks at the South; in Virginia. I shall incidentally refer to the condition of those at the North.

In one county of Virginia, a few years ago, an inventory and estimate of the value of the property of all the free blacks was made by order of the magistracy. With one exception the highest value placed upon the property of an individual was two dollars and a half ($2.50.) The person excepted owned one hundred and fifty acres of land, a cabin upon it, a mule and some implements. He had a family, including only his wife and children, of nine. Of provisions for their support, there were in the house, at the time of the visit of the appraisers, a peck and a half of Indian meal and part of a herring. The man was then absent to purchase some more meal, but had no money, and was to give his promise to pay in wood, which he was to cut from his farm. And this was in Winter.

This shows their general poverty. That this poverty is not the result of want of facilities or security for accumulating property, is proved by the exceptional instances of considerable wealth existing among them. An account of the [119] death of a free colored man who devised by will property to the amount of thirty thousand dollars, has been lately in the newspapers. I have ascertained the general accuracy of the narration though one somewhat important circumstance was omitted. It was stated that the man preferred that his children should continue in the condition of slaves, and gave his property to a man who was to be their master. He gave as a reason for this that he had personally examined the condition of the free blacks in Philadelphia and Boston, as well as in Virginia, and he preferred that his children should remain slaves, knowing that their master would take better care of them than they were capable of exercising for themselves. This was substantially correct, and I have conversed with a gentleman who tried to persuade him to act otherwise, to whom he gave these reasons. He had been, however, for a long time before his death, in a low state of health, and I know not how sound, or uninfluenced by others, his mind might have been. The circumstance omitted was, that these were illegitimate children, by a slave woman, although he had a wife that was a free woman, and had had a child by her—which, however, died young. It is a general custom of white people here to leave their illegitimate children, by slaves (and they are very common) in slavery. The man was himself a mulatto. I know of a very respectable and very wealthy man who sold his own half-brother to the traders to go South, because he attempted to run away.

I have heard of another case of a free negro in Virginia, supposed to be worth at least $5,000.

At the present rate of wages, any free colored man can accumulate property more rapidly in Virginia than almost any man, depending solely on his labor, can at the North. In the tobacco factories in Richmond and Petersburg slaves are at this time in great demand, and are paid one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars, and all expenses, for a year. These slaves are expected to work only to a certain extent for their employers; it having been found that they could not be “driven” to do a fair day’s work so easily as they could be stimulated to it by the offer of a bonus for all they would manufacture above a certain number of pounds. This quantity is so easily exceeded that the slaves earn for themselves from five to twenty dollars a month. Freemen are paid for all they do at rates which make their labor equally profitable, and can earn, if they give but moderate attention and diligence to the labor, very large sums. The barber under the Bollingbroke Hotel has a younger brother, who works in a tobacco factory, whose wages last year amounted to over nine hundred dollars. Of this he has laid up not one cent, and such is the case with nearly all the hands so employed in the town; they spend their wages as do the slaves their “over money,” almost as rapidly as they receive it, and as foolishly and as much to their own injury as do sailors, or the manufacturing workmen in England. Of the truth of this, I have assurances from every quarter, and from men of all opinions.

Formerly, I am told, the slaves were accustomed to recreate themselves in the evening and on holidays a great deal in dancing, and that they took [120] great enjoyment in this exercise. It was at length, however, preached against, and the “professors” so generally induced to use their influence against it as an immoral practice, that it has greatly gone “out of fashion,” and in place of it the young ones have got into the habit of gambling, and worse occupations, for the pastime of their holidays and leisure hours. I have not seen any dancing during these holidays, nor any amusement engaged in by the blacks that was not essentially gross, dissipating or wasteful, unless I except firing of crackers.

Improvidence is generally considered here a natural trait of African character; and by none is it more so than by the negroes themselves. I think it is a mistake. Negroes, as far as I have observed at the North, although suffering from the contamination of habits acquired by themselves or their fathers in Slavery, unless they are intemperate, are more provident than whites of equal educational advantages. Much more so than the newly-arrived Irish, though the Irish are soon infected with the desire of accumulating wealth and acquiring permanent means of comfort. This opinion is confirmed by the experience of the City Missionaries—one of whom has informed me that where the very poorest classes of New-York reside, black and white in the same house, the rooms occupied by the blacks are generally much less bare of furniture and the means of subsistence than those of the whites.

I observed that the negroes themselves follow the notion of the whites here, and look upon the people of their race as naturally unfitted to provide for themselves far ahead. Accustomed like children to have all their necessary wants provided for. their whole energies and powers of mind are habitually given to obtaining the means of temporary ease and enjoyment. Their masters and the poor or “mean” whites acquire somewhat of the same habits from early association with them, calculate on it in them, do not wish to cure it, and by constant practices encourage it. The negroes depend much for the means of enjoying themselves on presents. Their good-natured masters (and their masters are very good-natured. though capricious and quick-tempered) like to gratify them, and are ashamed to disappoint them—to be thought mean. So it follows that with the free negroes, habit is upon them; the habits of their associates, slaves. make the custom of society—that strongest of agents upon weak minds. The whites think improvidence a natural defect of character with them, expect it of them as they grow old, or as they lose easy means of gaining a livelihood, charitably furnish it to them; expect them to pilfer; do not look upon it as a crime; if they do, at least, consider them but slightly to blame, as, indeed, they are; and so every influence of association is unfavorable to providence, forethought, economy. I shall continue this subject in my next.

With such influences upon them, with such a character, with such education, with such associations, as I described in my last letter, it is not surprising that Southerners say that the condition of the slave who is subject to some wholesome restraint, and notwithstanding his improvidence is systematically provided for, is preferable to that of the free black. The free black does not in general feel himself superior to the slave, and the slaves of the wealthy and aristocratic families consider themselves in a much better and more honorable position than the free blacks. I have heard their view of the matter expressed thus “_____ dirty free niggers!—got no body to take care of ’em.”

It is for this reason that slaves of gentlemen of high character, who are [122] treated with judicious indulgence, and who can rely with confidence on the permanence of their position, knowing that they will be kindly cared for as they grow old, and feeling their own incapacity to take care of themselves, do often voluntarily remain in slavery when freedom is offered them, whether it be at the South, or North, or in Africa. A great many slaves that have been freed and sent to the North, after remaining there for a time, have of their own accord, returned to Virginia, and their report of the manner in which negroes are treated there, the difficulty of earning enough to provide themselves with the luxuries to which they have been accustomed, the unkindness of the white people to them, and the want of that thoughtless liberality in payments to them which they expect here from their superiors, has not been such as to lead others to pine for the life of an outcast at the North. Among those so returning, have been many of Mr. Randolph’s slaves, I understand.

And here let me say, as I am most happy to do, that I am convinced that the real kindness of heart and generosity of the people of Virginia, makes practically of no effect their unjust, cruel and cowardly laws with regard to free negroes—unjust, because they interfere with a man’s quiet possession of the rewards of his own labor—cruel, because they separate friends, break up families, and make men homeless outcasts among strangers—cowardly, because they attempt to throw upon others a danger and evil which is the natural result of the peculiar constitution of their own society.

The spread of intelligence of all kinds among the slaves is remarkable. A planter told me that he had frequently known of his slaves going twenty miles from home and back during the night, without their being missed at all from work, or known at the time to be off the plantation. Another told me that he had been frequently informed by his slaves of occurrences in a town forty miles distant, where he spent part of the year with his family, in advance of the mail, or any means of communication that he could command the use of. Also, when in town, his servants would sometimes give him important news from the plantation, several hours before a messenger dispatched by his overseer arrived.

I do not wish to be understood as intimating that the slaves generally would not like to be freed and sent to the North, or that they are ever really contented or satisfied with slavery; only that as having been deprived of the use of their limbs from infancy, as it were, they are not such fools as to wish now suddenly to be set upon their feet, and left to shift for themselves. They prefer, if they have sufficient worldly wisdom, to secure at least plain food and clothing, and comfortable lodging, at their owner’s expense, while they will return as little for it as they can, and have only the luxuries of life to work for on their own account. It is not easy to deprive them of the means of securing a good share of these.

These luxuries to be sure, may be of very degrading character, and such as, according to our ideas, they would be better without. But their tastes and habits are formed to enjoy them, and they are not likely to be content without them.

[123]

But, to live either on their own means, or the charitable assistance of others, at the North, they must dispense with many of them. It is as much as most of them—more than some of them, with us—can do, by their labor, to obtain the means of subsistence, such as they have been used to being provided with, without a thought of their own, at the South. And if they are known to indulge in practices that are habitual with them, they will not only lose the charity, but even the custom, of most of their philanthropical friends; and then they must turn to pilfering again, or meet that most pitiful of all extremities—poverty from want of work. Again: Suppose them to wish to indulge in their old habits of sensual pleasure, they can only do so by forsaking the better class of even their own color, or by drawing them down to their own level. In this way, Slavery, even now, day by day, is greatly responsible for the degraded and immoral condition of the free blacks of our cities, and especially of Philadelphia. It is, perhaps, necessary that I should explain that licentiousness and almost indiscriminate sexual connection among the young is very general, and is a necessity of the system of Slavery. A Northern family that employs slave domestics, and insists upon a life of physical chastity in its female servants, is always greatly detested; and they frequently come to their owners and beg to be taken away, or not hired again, though acknowledging themselves to be kindly treated in all other respects. A slave owner told me this of his own girls hired to Northern people.

That the character and condition of some is improved by coming to the North, it is impossible to deny. From a miserable half barbarous, half brutal state they have been brought to the highest civilization. From slaves they have sometimes come to be intelligent, cultivated, free-thinking, independent-minded, and good and even great men. Frederick Douglass is a great man, if poetry, eloquence and vigorous original thought make greatness. He is but little less great that the vindictive energy with which he pursues the enemy that prevents his being recognized as so, that even taboos him from the society of the cultivated and refined, sometimes carries him beyond the bounds of calm reason and good taste.

It is minds of such character originally that slavery is most galling to, and in which the intelligence and energy necessary to obtain freedom is most likely to reside. For this reason the condition and character of the fugitive slaves does not give a fair indication of that of the mass, and yet it surely is not such, take them all in all, as to make it appear that if the great body of slaves should be sent to free States they would be better off than they are now. I doubt if we have reason to think their children would. In my opinion, this is the greatest reproach to slavery, but the fact remains against hasty measures to destroy it.

As to slaves set free by the masters, without any previous education for it and sent to the free States, I have no doubt they often come to great suffering; and if it should be a frequent or general practice, the result would be anything but desirable. I know of one case in which seven were thus permitted to go to [124] Philadelphia, of which five died in three years, two returned to Virginia, and only one remains—of whose condition I am uninformed, but have no reason to think, and do not believe it at all better in any way than when he was a slave.

As to Liberia,it is certainly true that the negroes, either slave or free, are not generally disposed to go there. It is a distant country, of which they can have but very little reliable information, they do not like the idea any more than other people do of emigrating from their native country. But I really think that the best reason for their not being more anxious to go there is that they are sincerely attached in a certain way to the white race. At all events they do not incline to live in communities entirely separate from the whites and do not long for entire independence from them. They have been so long accustomed to trusting the government of all weighty matters to the whites, that they would not feel at home where they did not have them to “take care of them.” As I pointed out before, they do not feel inclined to take great responsibilities on themselves, and have no confidence in the talent of their race for self-government. A gentleman told me that he owned a very intelligent negro who had acquired some property, and that he had more than once offered him his freedom, but he would always reply that he did not feel able to fall entirely upon his own resources, and preferred to have a master. He once offered him his freedom to go to Liberia, and urged him to go there. His reply was to the effect that he would have no objections if the Government was in the hands of white folks, but that he had no confidence in the ability of black people to undertake the control of public affairs.

To conclude this letter, I will tell you what I think the continued existence of Slavery in Virginia depends upon. First—

Upon the very low and degraded condition of the mass of the people. The proportion of those who cannot read and write in the State is more than thirty times as great as in Connecticut. From their want of intelligence they are duped, frightened, excited, prejudiced and made to betray their most direct and evident interests by the more cultivated and talented, spendthrift and unprincipled of the wealthy class. These, who, without the slightest prudence or care for the future of the Commonwealth, live dependent for the means of their selfish extravagance on the slave labor of today, form “public opinion” by their reckless energy.

Meanwhile the truly wise and good men of the State suffer themselves to be left in the background, suffer themselves to appear in a false position, even aid by their apparent countenance of the wicked and foolish, the general expression of attachment to Slavery, because the question, What can be done, is too great for them, and because they really think the only remedy that is proposed would be productive of greater evil than the disease.

No one speaks a word aloud of it, but not a sober, thinking man of the State is there that does not know that Slavery is a Curse upon him and his, and that if it were possible to remove the effect of causes that are not alone in the [125] future or the present, Virginia would be a hundred times richer, a thousand times happier, if Slavery were not.

P. S.—Since I wrote this letter I have been convinced that the sentiment I have described in the last paragraph is even deeper and more general with the mass of the people than I then imagined. I must mention an incident indicative of it. I was standing on the platform of a railroad car at a station where a gang of slaves had been waiting to take our train to proceed South, but the “servant’s car” being full they were left behind. Two men, one of whom I afterwards learned to be a bar-keeper, the other an overseer, stood with me on the platform. As we moved off one said to the other:

“That’s a good lot of niggers.”

“Good! I only wish they belonged to me, I wouldn’t ask for anything else.”

They continued in conversation, starting with this, for some time, though I heard but little of what they said. They were talking of their different occupations, and grumbling that they succeeded no better. One, I heard say, that the highest wages he had ever had was two hundred dollars a year, and that year he did not lay up a cent. Soon after, one of them spoke with much vehemence and bitterness of tone, so I do not doubt their whole previous conversation had had reference to the point.

“I wish to God, old Virginny was free of all the niggers!”

“It would be a d_____d good thing if she was.”

“Yes, and I tell you, it would be a—d_____d good thing for us poor fellows.”

“Well, I reckon it would, myself.”

But, mind you, these same “poor fellows” understand the impracticability of instantly abolishing Slavery and having on their hands a vast population of freed slaves—more degraded and impressible with exciting prejudices than even themselves—as well as any body, and would be the very first to tar and feather an “Abolitionist” if he came to advise them to it.